At Night Owl Video, 'rewind' to old-school video store nostalgia

NEW YORK -- Tired of endlessly scrolling in search of your next movie night watch? At Night Owl Video, take a step back from the TV and enter the nostalgic world of physical media.

"If you look around, it's so much more impactful to look at the DVD spines, pull something out, look at the cover art," Co-Founder Aaron Hamel says. "The art may catch your eye, and you may have found your new favorite movie."

Located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on a block aptly nicknamed 'Analog Alley' (its neighbors include genre bookshop The Twisted Spine and specialty game store Twenty Sided), Night Owl Video boasts over 10,000 film and television titles on any given day, ranging from Criterion Collection selections to Blu-Rays to VHS tapes.

"We have genres of all kinds- anything for movie lovers to enjoy the hunt," Hamel says.

Whether he's collecting them or watching them, Hamel has always loved movies.

"Since I was a young kid, I loved watching movies, and I collected movies," he explains. "When DVD came out, every store wanted to liquidate its VHS. I was buying them all up."

Despite his success in physical media sales on sites like eBay and a post-graduate move to NYC, a metropolis with a shop for just about any niche hobby imaginable, Hamel noticed a lack of video stores in the city.

"I came to New York after college, and I met my Co-Founder, Jess Mills," Hamel recounts: prior to their collaboration as co-founders, the two worked together for years within NYC's indie film community.

"And after a long time of lamenting that there were no video stores left in New York, Jess convinced me to open a store."

Customers range from moms browsing for children's TV shows for their toddlers to older film lovers searching for obscure or foreign titles. Some folks stop in just to sell their own DVDs, Blu-Rays or VHS tapes. Regardless of what they're looking for, nearly every customer spends a moment chatting with either Hamel, Mills, or another patron, discussing selections and providing recommendations.

With such easy conversation occurring amongst a sea of shelves packed with DVDs and VHS tapes, Night Owl Video feels reminiscent of a time when stores like Blockbuster thrived, and the act of choosing a movie to watch was an interactive adventure rather than a stay-at-home scroll.

"It's important to have a store like this, especially in the age of streaming culture."

Hamel and Mills like to consider the store a 'third space,' a place where community, conversation, and connection are fostered.

"I think it's an important thing, making this more of a community space than just a store."

Night Owl Video has certainly done just that, with their One-Year Anniversary festivities yielding an admittedly-'tremendous' turnout: from in-store anniversary sales to an after-party in Nitehawk Cinema's basement bar, Lo-Res, the community built through Night Owl Video showed up on a scale far beyond Hamel's expectations.

"It was emotional to see what it means to people, you know, to have a place like this," Hamel says. "The whole idea behind the store was to foster community and it seems to be happening, which is very encouraging."

Click here to learn more about Night Owl Video.